Over the last five to ten years, the Internet and related utilization of email has revolutionized the way businesses, entities and individuals complete transactions and communicate. Individuals can now buy goods and services and pay bills with a few clicks of a mouse. Businesses have innovated new methods of operations that streamline costs and open new channels of revenue all via the Internet. Additionally, the widespread use of instant messaging has demonstrated that the Internet is a preferred communication vehicle.
While the Internet has certainly increased a person's choice of how to interact with others, the new choices are not without disadvantages. Email, for example, is still primarily based on a standard developed in the late 1980's and does not take into account contemporary concerns for security. Security concerns encompass, but are not limited, to transfer of computer viruses, unsolicited email (spam) and ID authentication (how does a person really know an email came from the identified sender?). Additionally, once a person sends an email message, they cannot control how the information is further propagated.
Instant messaging helps to solve the discontinuity of conversations formerly conducted via email. But, if an online conversation is unexpectedly terminated, the conversation is not easily re-started since no record was kept Instant messaging also has the ID authentication issue, which can discourage its use for some individuals.
The world of e-commerce also has its drawbacks. Servers can easily be overloaded at peak holiday shopping periods. Smaller businesses often cannot afford the initial investment to create an Internet presence. Local merchants are resentful that local consumers buy goods, offered locally, from competitors in other cities. Additionally, services that require an interaction between a customer and vendor have not been adequately implemented onto the World Wide Web.
Although secure communications schemes have been developed based on the use of public/private key pairs, such schemes are not without their disadvantages. For persons to be able to communicate with an individual, that individual's public key must be available for others to use. Finding the public key of an individual to communicate with them is a hassle that inhibits the use of secure communication and goes a long way toward explaining why such schemes have not become widely adopted. Another problem arises is a user loses their private key. In that unfortunate (but all too common) circumstance, the user must acquire a new public/private key pair. This is an additional layer of hassle, particularly for all their correspondents who must now go fetch that user's new public key.
In modern society the concept of personal identity has become blurred to mean something other than what it should. It has become common to confuse the credentials that have been given to a person as being that person's identity. Confusing credentials with identity has the disadvantage that it does not establish a relationship. A person's identity should be based on their relationships with other persons, not tokens that represent credentials.
Accordingly, what is needed is a method and system to improve communication over a network or Internet, increase security and foster the growth of business of all sizes locally and in other geographic areas. What is also needed is a way to provide secure communications that does not rely on the use of public keys that are inconvenient to find. What is also needed is a way to enforce the contextual relationship that is implied by identity.